Fireplace Mantel
by ModernScribe
Summary: A reflection of Mildred Krebbs' life as illustrated by her fireplace mantel.


**Disclaimer: I don't own "Remington Steele", but I am looking for season 4 on DVD if anyone knows where I can find it. **

**Spoilers: The whole show from season 2 forward, although particularly season 2, episode 21, "Hounded Steele." If you haven't seen it, I suggest it, but it's not really necessary to understand this story. **

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Fireplace Mantel**

You can tell a lot about a person from their fireplace mantel. Their hobbies—collecting ceramic cats figurines, reading by firelight, enjoying a nightcap after dinner, bowling on the weekends. Their personalities—fake, carefree, organized, disorganized. But of all the things you can tell about a person from their fireplace, the most important one is whether that person is alone.

For a long time, Mildred Krebbs was alone. She didn't have anyone to love and no one to love her back. Her mantel was, in a word, empty.

She'd been alone for a long time now. She didn't realize it at first. It had come on so gradually.

She'd married young, not because she particularly loved her boyfriend, but because it was a time when that kind of thing was expected of a good American lady like her.

There was a war going on. It was a man's duty to fight and a woman's to stand by her man. When her high school sweetheart got it into his head to enlist, she did her duty and sent her obligatory letters of encouragement and care packages. When he made it home in one piece, it was only right that she stop leading him on and accept his proposal.

They were reasonably happy the first ten or so years. They didn't have any kids, but then again she'd never really seen the appeal of drooling carbon copies of her and her husband.

After ten or so years though, she started to get bored. It wasn't her husband's fault really, it was just that he was all she'd ever known and she wanted to know more. She craved adventure and danger and newness.

Her husband was patient at first, but eventually even he gave up trying to tame her. Their divorce was finalized a week before their twentieth anniversary. Maybe if they'd really loved each other, it would have been different, but they didn't and it wasn't.

Independent for the first time, she delighted in her new freedom. She'd always loved keeping the house books, so she decided to take an accounting class at the nearby junior college. She'd excelled in the course and graduated two years later as an official CPA.

Almost immediately, she'd been snapped up by the IRS to work in the fraud department. It wasn't quite the exciting adventure she'd imagined when she'd been married, but it still felt good to earn her own paycheck. She'd spent six years with the fraud squad before she was transferred to audits. She'd had more fun catching criminals in fraud, but auditing meant more traveling.

It was at this point in her life that she began to regret for the first time her lack of family. Her parents were long gone and her nearest sister lived up north. There is nothing like coming home to an empty house to put your life in perspective. She considered getting a cat, but that would be playing into a terrible stereotype and she'd always thought dogs were more interesting anyway.

She joined a female bowling team, the Dragon Ladies, and it felt nice to have somebody outside of work, but she was beginning to get that restless, unfulfilled feeling like there was more that she could be doing with her life. Still, she resigned herself to her fate.

Then one day, she was assigned a special case of a missing tax return for one Remington Steele, private investigator.

That assignment and its ramifications changed her life.

What began as a simple possibility of fraud became a chase to Acapulco and an adventure she'd never thought she'd have. Kidnapping, mistaken identities, murder, money, and mayhem. It was the life of which she'd always dreamed.

When she'd returned to the States, her first stop was to her IRS supervisor. She turned in her letter of resignation only seconds before she learned she was fired. Somehow she couldn't find it in herself to be sad about losing her fifteen-year career. She'd had a taste of a new world and she wanted more. Much more.

The next day she accepted the position at the Remington Steele Detective Agency. She didn't even mind that it might only have been offered to her as a bribe.

At first she was in awe of her new bosses. They were so brave, so clever, so confident. She wished she had half of their strength and skill. Perhaps that's why, when her bowling team asked what she did, she lied and said she was the top operative in the agency instead of the receptionist she was.

In a word, she was jealous. Not of them per say, but of all the admiration they inspired. If she were honest with herself, that's all she'd ever really wanted: admiration. No one had ever truly admired her before.

Being in their presence gave her a taste of that admiration, a glance at the limelight. She basked in that reflected spotlight, while in the meantime relishing the mystery and adventure of her new life.

It wasn't always easy and it wasn't always fun—particularly during the numerous times she was kidnapped on the job—but it was always worth it.

But beyond the danger and purpose the Remington Steele Detective Agency provided, there was something else: family. That's what they were--Mr. Steele and Miss Holt--her family.

It didn't start out that way, but there is only a certain number of times you can be held at gunpoint together before a bond forms and you come to depend on each other for other, less life threatening things as well.

While at times it felt as if they depended on her much less than she did on them, in times of crisis, it became clear that they were equally important to each other.

The bonds they shared were more than just co-dependency though. There was a deep affection—dare it be said love—felt by all. But while the type of affection was decidedly different between Miss Holt and Mr. Steele, the affection felt by her for them and by them for her was no less important or present.

For her, Mr. Steele and Miss Holt were equal parts parents and favorite nephew and niece, depending on their attitudes towards each other and her. They perhaps saw her as a lovable, if somewhat eccentric, aunt.

They made up a strange family, but a family nonetheless.

It took awhile to dawn on her, but eventually Mildred Krebbs realized that for the first time in a long time, she was really and truly not alone. For the first time in a long time, she had a family. For the first time in a very long time, there were pictures on her fireplace mantel.

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A/N: This story has been bugging me since I saw Mildred's fireplace in "Hounded Steele." There were only two pictures on it: her bowling team and Remington and Laura. This was equal parts sweet and sad. I also felt that Mildred is sadly underrepresented. This is my tribute to her. By the way, the way I calculated, she probably married in 1946 following WW2, which, accounting for all the years spent married and working for the IRS, brings her perfectly to 1983. **


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